Category Archives: Rituals, festivals, holidays

Food and Clothing Traditions for Chinese Lunar New Year

Informant Details

  1. Gender: Female
  2. Occupation: Student
  3. Nationality: Chinese-American

Folklore Genre: Holiday Rituals and Superstitions, Calendar Year

  1. Text

The informant explained some traditions and superstitions associated with the Chinese Lunar New Year. During the Lunar New Year, it is traditional to place oranges around different rooms in your house for good luck and prosperity. On New Year’s Eve, you eat a vegetarian diet so that you don’t bring bad energy from hurting other forms of life going into the new year. On New Year’s Day, there is a big feast with a lot of specific lucky dishes. It is best to eat as a family because this brings good fortune and togetherness, but it isn’t considered bad luck if you are eating alone. During this feast, you have to eat some of each dish to ensure you are lucky in all parts of your life. Noodles are eaten to represent longevity. It is bad luck to cut these noodles because this implies that you will shorten your life. Chicken is eaten to ‘fly’ into a year of good fortune, fish is eaten for prosperity and good luck, and green vegetables are eaten for financial wealth and good fortune. Similarly, you are meant to wear colors that represent certain aspects of your life. Wearing red brings good luck, wearing green brings wealth, wearing gold brings success, and wearing yellow brings good health. You can wear more than one color to cover all these areas of life. It is considered very bad luck to wear black on New Year’s Day because this color represents death. The superstition is that if you wear black, you or someone in your life will die. 

2. Context

These traditions and superstitions are done during the Lunar New Year, which usually occurs around the end of January. The informant learned these rituals from her mother and grandmother. Her mother is Chinese-American and her grandmother is Chinese.

3. Analysis

Cultural values are reflected in the specific areas of life represented through the dishes and colors. Many of the traditions are meant to bring financial prosperity. This suggests that striving for wealth is viewed as admirable in this culture and wealth is viewed positively. Health and longevity are also highly prioritized. This suggests that growing old is seen as a blessing in this culture. Additionally, togetherness is valued, which indicates that family relationships are a priority. Overall, these rituals focus on bringing blessings into the new year, instead of reflecting on the past year, which suggests that this culture has a future-oriented viewpoint. These rituals also connect to the idea of homeopathic magic because you are meant to eat and wear things that symbolize the future you want. 

Cutting Hair for Chinese Lunar New Year 

Informant Details

  1. Gender: Female
  2. Occupation: Student
  3. Nationality: Chinese-American

Folklore Genre: Holiday Ritual/Superstition

  1. Text

The informant explained a ritual done for the Chinese Lunar New Year. She said that people are supposed to cut their hair before the new year, and then not cut it for a while after the new year. It doesn’t matter how much is cut off – it can be just a trim. Sometimes she will go to a salon, but other times she cuts her hair herself. She has done this every year for as long as she can remember. Both women and men partake in this tradition. If you don’t cut your hair, the superstition is that you are carrying all of the bad things that happened to you in the past year into the new year. So, if you don’t cut your hair then you bring bad energy and bad luck into your future.

2. Context

The informant’s understanding of this ritual is that it signifies “out with the old, in with the new” because you cut off your dead ends to make room for the new growth in the new year. The informant was taught this ritual as a young child. She learned this from her Grandmother, who is from Guangzhou, China.

3. Analysis

This ritual embodies the principles of contact magic. The hair is believed to carry the energy of the past because it grew during that time period. By cutting off the ends of this older hair, the individual is able to move forwards without the weight of the past. In International Folkloristics, Dundes says “With Contact or Contagious magic, one can carry out an action on an element that was once touched by or connected to the designated target of a magical act.” (186) In this example, the hair was connected to the individual’s past. Therefore, cutting the hair is analogous to cutting energetic ties to the past.

Makahiki games

Text: On the island of Molokai, Hawaii, a series of games called the Makahiki games are a yearly tradition. During the harvest season, which is late spring, there are a series of tournaments with age brackets including men and women. People from all over Hawaii are sent to Molokai to participate in these games. These games include spear throwing, a form of wrestling, and many other competitive things.

Context: The informant’s relationship to this piece is that she participated in it one year. Specifically, her school flew her from Oahu to Molokai to play for one of the games as a 13 year old. She found out about this because in Middle school, her school had a PE section where they played the Makahiki games. The informant interprets these games as a way to celebrate and indulge in her roots in relation to the history and how the games came about. 

Interpretation: I interpret these games as a way to connect with history and just be patriotic. Hawaiian culture is a very strong and uniting culture, so I think these games are another way to bring people together.

Greek Egg-Breaking Easter Ritual

Text: “So every Easter, the day before we will dye hard boil eggs and everyone will have an egg and on Easter we will go around and one person will try to crack a side of your egg. and you’ve got two chances So you go in a circle until everyone has broken both sides and one person has at least one good side left. So yeah. And then they win.”

Context:
Informant is a freshman at the University of Southern California studying Psychology, originally from Palos Verdes, CA from Greek-Jewish descent. We speak in the dining hall, and she is very excited and happy to be recounting her experiences.

“It’s epic and it’s fun and you get to do something with your dyed eggs. I don’t know, you know. It was just something my parents, I guess we were doing. We do it on both sides of the family. But I believe it’s like a Greek thing, and I have heard of at least one other person who does this. Well, I never win, so you know, like I, I enjoy it because it’s something our family does every year. It’s a way to use the eggs. You know, it’s fun to color eggs and stuff. So like then you get to actually like play a game with it.”

Analysis: This tradition is an example of a ritual performed in celebration of a holiday. The term “Easter” comes from the name of a pagan goddess and symbolizes new life and fertility. The ritual furthers this symbolism with eggs also being reminiscent of reproduction and fertility. The bright colors which they were being dyed are representative of the season of spring and the blooming of colorful nature. Although Easter is now largely recognized as a Christian holiday, rituals such as these have little relation to the biblical story of Jesus Christ. This ritual could be argued to be an example of ritual license because of how the eggs are dyed and played with which are activities usually discouraged when they relate to food items.

Thanksgiving Ham

Text: “My family always buys pre-sliced ham from our local grocery shop on Thanksgiving, and it’s really good with the special glaze that it comes with. It’s like this honey pineapple type glaze that’s sweet and then you combine the sweet with the savory from the ham, and it’s just an amazing concoction.”

Context:

Informant is a freshman at the University of Southern California studying human biology, originally from St. Louis, Missouri from Nigerian descent. We speak alongside a few of her other friends, and she carries a somewhat sarcastic, comedic tone.

“It’s a classic Thanksgiving staple in our family. And I honestly prefer eating the ham over turkey any day anytime. We began doing it when we moved into my new house which is my current house back at home. So probably 2013, 2014 ish. I think we do it because it’s way easier to prepare than a Turkey, and it tastes better. I’ve heard of other people doing it, but not for Thanksgiving more for Christmas. This tradition makes me feel so excited to wake up on Thanksgiving morning. I can smell the sweet, savory aroma of the ham tickle my nostrils. Wow.”

Analysis: Having this specific dish on a certain holiday is an example of a ritual. It is a ritual which commemorates something, namely the early days of colonized America. It is performed within a certain group of people at a specific time of year. It is also an example of ritual inversion in how modern folk tradition places ham on the menu for Christmas and turkey on the menu for Thanksgiving, but the informant’s family reverses these traditions. They are able to invert the normal social rules because they have claimed their own celebration as their own time for traditions and rituals.